I was born in the Dublin street where the loyal drums do beat,
And the loving English feet walked all over us;
And every single night when me dad would come home tight,
He'd invite the neighbours out with this chorus:

Come out you black and tans, come out and fight me like a man,
Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders;
Tell her how the IRA made you run like hell away,
From the green and lovely lakes of Killeshandra.

Come tell us how you slew them ol' Arabs two by two,
Like the Zulus they had knives and bows and arrows;
Of how bravely you faced one with your sixteen-pounder gun,
And you frightened all the natives to the marrow.

Come out you black and tans, come out and fight me like a man,
Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders;
Tell her how the IRA made you run like hell away,
From the green and lovely lakes of Killeshandra.

Come let us hear you tell how you slammed the brave Parnell,
And taught him well and truly persecuted;
Where are the stares and jeers that you proudly let us hear,
When our heroes of sixteen were executed.

Come out you black and tans, come out and fight me like a man,
Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders;
Tell her how the IRA made you run like hell away,
From the green and lovely lakes of Killeshandra.

Oh! Come out you British Huns, come out and fight without your guns,
Show your wife how you won medals up in Derry;
You murdered sixteen men and you'll do the same again,
So get out of here and take your bloody army.

Come out you black and tans, come out and fight me like a man,
Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders;
Tell her how the IRA made you run like hell away,
From the green and lovely lakes of Killeshandra.

Oh! Come out you black and tans, come out and fight me like a man,
Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders;
Tell her how the IRA made you run like hell away,
From the green and lovely lakes of Killeshandra.

####.... Dominic Behan ....####

Dominic Behan wrote the Irish rebel song, Come Out Ye Black And Tans, referring to the British paramilitary police auxiliary force in Ireland during the 1920s, as a tribute to his father Stephen, to whom authorship of the song is often attributed.

This variant arranged and recorded by the Irish Descendants (Blooming Bright Star, 2000; We Are The Irish Descendants, 2004).

Notes:
¹ Killeshandra (Cill na Seanrètha, meaning Church of the Old Forts) is a town in County Cavan, Ireland. In 1841 the town had a population of over 12,500 but today it is less than 500.
² After the First World War, many veterans could not find work, some because of the country's economic depression, others because of psychological trauma. The British government enlisted a number of these unemployed men to serve as police in Ireland at 20 shillings per day. There was a shortage of complete black police uniforms, so the government added pieces from tan army uniforms. This led to the nickname Black and Tans, who ruthlessly enforced the law.
³ From Wikipedia: Charles Stewart Parnell [1846-1891] was an Irish Protestant landowner, nationalist political leader, land reform agitator, Home Rule MP in the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and founder and leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party. He was one of the most important figures in 19th century Ireland and Great Britain and described by Prime Minister William Gladstone as the most remarkable person he had ever met. Another future Liberal Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, described him as one of the three or four greatest men of the nineteenth century, while Lord Haldane described him as the strongest man the British House of Commons had seen in 150 years.